Patient simulation is moving to primary care

Cardenden Health Centre, Scotland:

While medical simulation training is becoming firmly established within our Acute Hospitals and Schools of Nursing and Medicine, the needs of Primary Care are no less important. Jim Milligan, Primary Care Resuscitation Officer of the NHS Fife region invites us to look at the newly built simulation training suite at the Cardenden Health Centre and tells us how their simulation programmes are helping to overcome some of the unique challenges in primary care.

Pick a challenge!

The provision of on-going and refresher training for clinical skills in rare emergencies in a climate strained by budget limitations is one challenge. Add to that the fragmentary nature of primary care itself with the multiple and diverse healthcare disciplines that make up this public service, and then consider the logistical challenges resulting from the wide dispersion of these services throughout a large geographical region. This is the world of Primary Care.

These challenges are not unique to the Fife region, but the development of a simulation centre within a Health Centre is a first and significant step forward to help provide more educational opportunities to a broad range of healthcare staff and improve the overall quality of patient care.

Considering the possibilities

“We wanted to adopt a transprofessional and multiprofessional approach to our education delivery to ensure that medical, nursing and AHP staff were given the necessary training opportunities to develop their clinical skills in the management of acute medical emergencies, cardiac arrest and other events appropriate to their clinical remit”, explains Jim Milligan. “We embarked on a project to construct an educational environment to include ‘virtual learning’ to support the learning needs of the professions fragmented geographically throughout NHS Fife.”